Die lateinische ›Versio vulgata‹ des griechischen Legendenromans von ›Barlaam und Josaphat‹

Abstract

Abstract The ›Versio vulgata‹, probably written around 1170 in Paris (St. Denis), a thoroughly accurate Latin translation of its Greek model, the ›Historia of Barlaam and Joasaph‹, is the starting point for the legend of ›Barlaam and Josaphat‹, which was widely used in all literature in the Western Middle Ages. It itself had an unusually rapid and broad reception, in which, according to the testimony of more than 100 preserved manuscripts, especially the new monastic orders of the 12th century participated, led by the Cistercians. The narrative programme of the ›Historia‹ is the path of the king’s son Josaphat into an existence of radical religious renunciation of the world, the central act of the plot being his departure from power, from the country and its people into the eremitic wilderness. It takes place against the protest of the people, who do not want to let the beloved king go, and especially against the protest of Prince Barachias, whom Josaphat forces into his succession. Here the individual’s desire for salvation not only disputes the claim of the salvation of the many, but above all denies the forced successor the possibility of an equal path of salvation. Thus the ›Historia‹ is loaded with an insoluble aporia at its key point. The use of the Bible has a formative effect on the style of the ›Historia‹, not so much the frequent citation of marked exact Bible quotations as the even more frequent insertion of smaller or larger biblical excerpts into the narrator’s speech or that of one of his characters as if they were part of their own speech.